06 - Vengeful Read online

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  President Gerard Harmon didn’t go by his full first name to the people who knew him. It was too formal, the name Gerard, so he’d gone by Gerry for years. He didn’t prefer the nickname, but he knew that others did, that it softened his edges, made voters feel he was a little more homespun than his record suggested. He’d been elected to the Senate from the state of Massachusetts on multiple occasions before serving as their governor for two full terms. It had all been planned out well in advance, of course. Every step of his public life had been, really. A lifetime of service that most people would have thought would culminate in him holding an office first held by John Hancock himself.

  He’d defied expectations on that one, though, and gotten himself re-elected president after beating out the Governor of Kansas in a wide-open race almost four years earlier. It had come down to the wire, really, but his taking over the post after a two-year stint as VP had given him the inside track and a narrow victory, which were advantages he was completely comfortable with. He also hadn’t been upset when a pitched meta battle had burned much of western Kansas. It had made such for such lovely attack ads in the general election. How could the man possibly govern the country when his own state was burning?

  Now Gerry Harmon was content to get his last term in place so he could go out at the top of the historical record: more time as President of the United States than anyone else in recent memory, clocking in damnably close to the new theoretical maximum of ten years. Cable news had been beating the drum on that one for months now, talking up the historical nature of it all. They needed something to talk about; after all, it wasn’t as if these people were smart enough to come up with interesting ideas of their own. No, they had to wait and see what happened so they could choose what to report. In his view, they were lower than pond scum, but he obliged them as much as he could since they were the most useful sort of idiots.

  President Harmon pursed his lips together as he gave the matter before him careful consideration. The White House Chef had prepared the most lovely French toast out of brioche for his dinner since he was doomed to work late again. He mopped up a little Vermont Maple Syrup—sent by one of the party leaders of that state, and good stuff indeed—with the last of it and ate it, careful not to drip any on his suit as he did so. It was sweet and wonderful, and he felt thankful, not for the first time, that he didn’t gain weight easily. He mopped his clean-shaven upper lip and chin with the soft cloth napkin even though he knew he hadn’t missed a drop, and regretted not asking his secretary to tell the chef four pieces of French toast, not three.

  “You were listening, right?” his chief of staff, a woman named Amanda Brackett, asked him. She was sitting across from the desk that had been made of the timbers of an old British ship that went by the name Resolute. It was a long and fascinating story how it had ended up becoming a desk, and one that he’d known long before he came to sit at the old oaken monstrosity. “Gerry?” He didn’t look up.

  “I’m always listening,” he said mildly, wadding up his napkin and tossing it onto the syrup-coated plate. That was how one did things in polite society. Both the mildness and the wadding of napkins, absolutes in his world.

  “What did you think?” Brackett asked him again. Her lips were a thin, dark line, her ebony skin causing her to look a little washed out in the dimness of the lamps he’d had turned on. The office could have been brighter had he wanted it to be so, but he preferred it in this state. His eyes didn’t have to work too hard to see in any case. “About the Nealon problem?”

  “I know what you were talking about,” he said, still mild. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d actually lost his temper. It was years and years, surely. It was probably one of the reasons he won the last debate he’d been part of; his opponent got angrier and angrier and he got calmer and calmer. “I don’t see Sienna Nealon as a problem.”

  “That campus is wrecked,” Brackett said. Her lips were drawing still tighter, and he started to worry about her. More than a little, in fact. Amanda had always been a worrier, but lately, as the campaign was winding down, it was taking its toll. “Tens of millions in damage, and we just rebuilt it after that thing in January—”

  “I’m aware,” Harmon said, still cool about it all. “I’m sure you’re already concocting a way to spin it to our advantage.”

  “Her unfavorables are so high, there’s no way to spin it with her involved that comes out well,” Brackett said, slapping a manila folder lightly on the Resolute desk. Harmon didn’t cringe from the harsh sound, but only because he knew it was coming well in advance. “We say the agency—we still need a better name for that group—”

  “Focus test something,” Harmon said.

  “—we say it came under terrorist attack, we look weak.” She still had her fingers on the folder, and she tapped it against the blotter. “We say it was a personal grudge match, we look like things are out of control in our own house. Congress is already chomping at the bit to move this little agency back to Washington—”

  “I don’t have a problem with that,” Harmon said. “We just kept it where it was for the budget hawks. If the other guys want to fund a new headquarters across the Potomac, let them pass it in an omnibus. I’ll sign it.”

  Brackett made a low noise in her throat. “I can’t tell whether you’re actively avoiding the subject I’m trying to raise or if you simply don’t see it for the issue it is.” She leaned in over the desk. “The election is in less than eight weeks, and Robb Foreman is kicking your ass in the polls. Sienna Nealon is an anchor around your neck, and she has been for months.”

  Harmon eyed the syrupy plate, the liquid soaking into the cloth napkin. “I think you’re overstating it.” He added a little extra cheer; there was no need to be so down about it all.

  “When you lose, do you think I’ll have overstated it then?” Brackett leaned back in her seat. This was the downside of Amanda Brackett. Every once in a while, she got frustrated and it bled out. Other than that, she was a fantastic chief of staff.

  “I’m not going to lose,” Gerry Harmon said, straightening up in his chair and settling back. The chair was specially made, bulletproof, and surprisingly comfortable given all that went into it.

  “Now you’re psychic, too, huh?” Brackett asked, doing a little settling back herself. She looked guarded, and he knew that she was mentally about to write him off for being overconfident.

  “I’ve got a home field advantage. Still, I’m not blind,” he said to appease her. “I know Sienna Nealon has been something of an impediment this time around. I suppose I don’t see her as the same sort of insurmountable obstacle you do, though.” He got to his feet and buttoned his jacket. “She tries, give her that. Fails, makes a mess, but she tries. It’s a tough job, and no one who’s done it before has ever had to be in the spotlight while doing it. She’s got every eye on her, and she’s faced some foes this last year that would have given anyone else in that seat a hell of a black eye, at least.” He took a deep breath in through his nose. “I think she could still be an advantage, and all it’d take is one really nasty meta incident without her in that job to make the press turn around on us like the ungrateful dogs they are.”

  “We have other contingencies,” Brackett said, and there was a hint of menace in the way she said it.

  “Gassing American citizens would definitely command a certain amount of attention,” Harmon agreed with a tight smile. “Not of the good sort, I think, but—”

  “It’s non-lethal.”

  “From a PR perspective, it’s worse than seeing a twenty-something girl beat up a handcuffed prisoner in a Manhattan restaurant,” Harmon said, walking over to the window. It was thick glass, and distorted the lights on the lawn. Sometimes he wondered if that wasn’t a perfect metaphor for anyone sitting in this particular seat.

  “This is going to keep happening,” Brackett said. “There’s no reining her in.”

  “With a
favorable break, she might just end up tossing things back our way yet. Like the Chicago meteor thing, for instance. Try leaking that.”

  Brackett waited a second before responding, and her voice was thick with skepticism when she did. “The media’s made their minds up about her. She’s nothing but a menace in their view.”

  It always came down to this, didn’t it? “Let’s change their minds.”

  Brackett made a deep, throaty “Hem!” noise that almost sounded like a laugh. “You ever try and change someone’s mind against their will?”

  He came around and smiled at her. “Every day. Hearts and minds, that’s what we’re here to win. Let’s persuade them to take a second look.”

  Amanda came to her feet, and there was no doubt she wasn’t exactly buying it. “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “If she becomes that big of a problem, we’ll deal with her,” President Gerard Harmon said, and he took a look out the window behind him again, and saw the light and the darkness mixing together through the distorted glass. “However we have to.”